Copyright of I burn Paris

Thu Apr 28 23:08:49 UTC 2005

Dear Bora,

I wanted to reply to your message with a few points. My
purpose is to clarify information rather than than to enforce
copyright compliance, just so that you know where I'm coming
from. This is an interesting and complicated scenario, but
the approach has veered off a little, and the categories have
becomed confused. You need to think about two main things:
the author and the country of origin of each version of the
work you will be using.

1) If this work was written by Bruno Jasienski who died in
1939 or 1941, and was originally published in France in
installments, the author is Jasienski and the country of
origin is France. You need to assess the copyright for
the original version and any other version you are using.

2) The law that governs copyright duration, as well as  use
of this work in the U.S., is U.S. law (because you plan to
translate and publish it here) not Polish or French law.
Referring to your point no. 1, the current Polish copyright
law actually protects works for life of the author plus 70
years, but that is beside the point. It's U.S. law you need
to look at.

3) Is the work currently protected in the U.S.? How do you
figure this out?

--Could it have had continuous protection in the U.S. from
the date of publication? Yes, if it was properly registered
and renewed in the U.S. The U.S. Copyright Office holds that
information.

--Even if it was not registered/renewed, could it have been
eligible for automatic copyright restoration in the U.S.?
How do you figure this out?

--Was it protected in the country of origin (France) on
January 1, 1996? Yes. On July 1, 1995 France was obligated to
extend its copyright term to life of the author plus 70
years. So on January 1, 1996 the French term was life plus 70
years. If Jasienski died in 1939 or 1941, his work was, and
still is, protected in France through 2009 or 2011.

--Did the U.S. hold copyright relations with France on
January 1, 1996? Yes. Therefore the U.S. was required on that
date to restore that work to the full U.S. term for a work
published in 1929. That term is 95 years from date of
publication.

Result: If the work was first published in France in 1929, it
is automatically protected in the U.S. through 2024, based on
U.S.-French copyright relations.

3) The Polish version has a separate copyright. If you are
translating from a Polish version published in Poland, you
need to repeat this process. The U.S. has had copyright
relations with Poland since 1927. On January 1, 1996 the
Polish copyright term for this work, which was then life plus
50 years, had expired (1939 or 1941 plus 50 = 1989 or 1991).
The work could not have been restored automatically. But if
it was properly registered/renewed in the U.S. over the
years, it could still be protected for the full U.S. term of
95 years from publication, through 2024.

4) Referring to your previous message, to the point that
Eenest Flammarion died in 1936, so the copyright expires soon
anyway. No! Ernest Flammarion was the copyright holder, not
the author, and his date of death has nothing whatsoever to
do with the copyright duration in any country.

4) By the way, the preface by Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski has
its own copyright term, determined in France by his date of
his death, and in the U.S. by the same term that governs
Jasienski's portion of the work (95 years from publication).

I think that you have been given some wrong information, but
that is very common these days. I don't know why Felin said
that the work is in the public domain, I don't see how it
could be. It's up to you whether you want to take a chance
here, but I just wanted to point out that the information you
were given was inconsistent and would not lead you to the
right conclusion.

All the best,

Janice

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:43:54 -0500
>From: Bora Chung <bochung at INDIANA.EDU>
>Subject: [SEELANGS] Copyright of I burn Paris
>To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>
>Update:
>1. The Polish copyright law says, as far as I understand,
that the copyright is
>valid for 70 years after the work was published. So I think
I can translate the
>1929 and/or the 1931 version. The 1931 version is complete
with all three parts
>and I haven't found any big difference between this one and
the 1974 Czytelnik
>edition.
>
>2. 1929 and 1931 editions have the same preface written by
Juliusz Kaden-
>Bandrowski. In fact they look identical, except that the
1929 edition is
>incomplete and the 1931 edition is complete. I wonder how
that happened.
>
>3.The first page of 1931 version says the story was
originally published for
>the first time in French in installments. That doesn't mean
it was originally
>written in French, though. If there was a translater from
Polish to French, I
>wonder who that was, just out of curiousity.
>
>4. Nothing about T. Ordon or the Russian translater so far.
In fact the preface
>to the 1930 Russian version is quite interesting but it's
anonymous.
>
>Bora Chung
>Slavic department
>Indiana University
>bochung at indiana.edu
>
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----------------------------------------
Janice T. Pilch, Assistant Professor of Library Administration
Acting Head, Acquisitions, Slavic and East European Library
Librarian for South Slavic Studies and Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801
Tel. (217) 244-9399  E-mail: pilch at uiuc.edu

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